Elements Organizer: Images and Tags missing

HEY what's up with backing up my files to your Online Storage from my Organizer and then removing all those files and tags from my Organizer? Either that or your PSE 9 update that I installed yestrday basically reformatted my Organizer and I now have to start over. I literally spent hundreds and hundreds of hours spent organizing my photos, tags, and grading my photos in Photoshop Elements 9 and one update wiped it all out in a matter of minutes. Not cool, NOT COOL AT ALL!!

Uploading images from Elements Organizer to Photoshop.com will not delete any information from your computer. Even deleting images from Photoshop.com will not delete the files from your computer.

As everything disappeared on your computer, my best guess is that you are now working in a new catalog in Elements Organizer for some reason. Check File>Catalog and see if more than one catalog is listed.

Worst case scenario is you will have to download the files from Photoshop.com back to your computer. But at this point I don't believe that will be a necessity.

Thanks for the timely reply :/ Fortunately, no photos were missing from my external hard drive. But everything was missing from PSE 9 Organizer, photos, tags, albums, locations on the map, everything!! I basically had to start over. Strangely, you would assume that once a photo is "Tagged" in the PSE Organizer that if something like what I mentioned happened, all I should have to do reload the photos and all the Tags would still be there, on all the photos that were tagged. What was really weird is that some were, and some weren't. Some photos had their tags and some didn't. VERY aggravating.At the time I was processing over 1500 photos from a dance recital as well as another 700 from a football game and I had to pretty much start organizing and re-tagging as though all of them had never been tagged. This took me the better part of an afternoon.

In the past I've had other issues with older versions of Elements Organizer and needless to say I no longer trust any Elements Organizer for anything more than temporary storage of RAW files while I edit photos in the Editor. I've also learned that when a photo is "Tagged" it's not something that can be relied upon to show up on an different computer using PSE 9 (This has happened in older versions as well). At this time, I don't have any complaints about PSE 9's Editor, but if it totally craps out on me after 2-3 years like PSE 4&6 did. then you'll hear a complaint

Unless the catalog file became corrupted (which would be surprising given that it still opens), I still believe that you are looking at a new catalog.

When you add tags and other metadata to files in the Organizer, you are not applying that information to the file itself. The Organizer is non-destructive, it does not edit the original file unless you tell it to. When you add a tag, it is only tagging the file reference within the database. If you would like the tag to be attached to the file itself so that it will show up on other computers, you have to go to File>Write Keyword Tag and Properties Info to Photos.

Take the time to re-read what Brett N explained: the tagging is not applied to the media files themselves by default. It is kept in a catalog. The tags are recovered if you 'convert' the old version catalog to the new one. If you re-import, the only way to recover them is to write the tags (metadata) to the files, which you can do when you want (shortcut Ctrl D).
You have the choice: writing tags to the files means re-writing all the media files (or at least the xmp sidecar files for raws). Just think of the time required to do that, and test how quick it would be to assign a new tag to each file of your library in the catalog instead.
Of course, writing metadata to files is necessary if you want to share your images with another software, and it is a good additional safety step. If you prepare an upgrade to a new version, that's a good thing to do, together with searching missing files, repairing and optimizing the catalog.

Sorry to interupt but I have just upgraded from 10 to 14. The importer renamed the catalog but didn't import keyword tags associated with the pics into 14. On reverting to the original catalog in 10 I find the tags are missing there as well. Any ideas? Bill

Hi Andaleeb
I should have been more detailed in the problem definition.
I downloaded PSE 14 and ran it. I have two catalogues with 17000 photos on one and 12000 on the other. The first catalogue (the one that isn't the "current"one) transferred correctly 'with all tags in place. PSE14 then went on to ask if it should transfer the second (current) one from PSE 10 and said it was changing its name. This catalog transferred all the pictures but none of the tags. If I revert to PSE 10, the tags are no longer in that catalogue either.
Before you tell me to simply restore the last back up, the reason I was doing the upgrade at this time was because the back up hard disc had destroyed itself and I was in the process of upgrading the HW, Op Sys to Win 10, and finally PSE to V14. It all went well till the last catalogue on PSE but I have no back up. A sad tale but it's where I am so any help would be gratefully received. Re-tagging 12000 pics would be a very painful process.
Thanks

Thanks for the explanation. We are not aware of any scenario in which Tags get deleted from catalog database while converting. If right now, there are no tags in your 12k PSE10 and PSE14 catalogs, it's highly unlikely to retrieve them.Please see Help > System Info > Catalog Location and go to this location on your hard disk. It's possible that your actual 12k catalog (along with tags) is still present there with a different name. Try opening all catalogs present here in Organizer once and verify if any of them have tags.

It would indeed be a sad tale if I have to tell you to re-tag all 12k files.

Hi Andaleeb Thanks for this, it gives me hope. I'm away from the PC till next week now and will try your suggestion when I return. I'm sure they're there somewhere, I just can't understand why the process isn't foolproof. I'll be in touch.
Thanks again. Bill.

Well, having explored every avenue I can only assume there is either a problem with PSE14 transferring two catalogues or I did something wrong in the process. I assume the latter but am not normally afflicted with finger trouble. Whichever it is, be warned the system isn't foolproof.
I've just commenced the task of re-tagging 12000 pictures. Thanks for trying to help. If there's anything you know I could have done to achieve the state I find myself in then it would be good to write it here so others can learn from it.
Thanks again
Bill

There is one more thing we may try- just to rule out the possibility of catalog duplication. It's a bruteforce method of searching your entire system (include hidden folders as well) for 'catalog.pse10db'. This way we would get to know what all PSE10 catalogs were ever created and it is possible that one of those catalogs if actually the one with all your tags.

If this doesn't help, I would appreciate if you could share your catalog.pse10db and catalog.pse14db files with us through Dropbox or any other means. (My mail ID is afatima@adobe.com) We would like to cross check once more if there is an easier way to get all your tags back.

It happened to me. I added a bunch of new keywords on my new install of PSE 14, and now they have disappeared. I used them once, exited the program, and when I opened the program again, they were gone.

Also, the keyword tags defaulted to the generic tags and the pictures assigned to the keyword tags are gone. I wish I hadn't upgraded. This is just one of the problems I'm having with this new version. Sigh.